 Good afternoon, everyone. This is the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development, and we are joined by the House Government Operations Committee as well this afternoon. We're here to speak with Commissioner Harrington from the Department of Labor and Director Cameron Wood on kind of giving both committees. What UI, what unemployment insurance is all about. And I think before we start that we'll do introductions but Commissioner I think one place we probably should start right from the beginning is the antiquated IT system that we have and and the problems that arise from that, along with in the future and what we're looking at to do those upgrades. So before we get to that, I'll ask my committee to introduce themselves and then Chair Copeland-Hons as if you would, you can take over and have your committee introduce themselves as well. So to begin with, I'm Michael Markout. I'm from Coventry. I represent Coventry, Irisburg, Newport City, Newport Town, and I'm chair of the committee and Charlie. Good afternoon. Nice to be with you all. Charlie Kimball from Woodstock, Representative Woodstock, Reading and Plymouth and the Vice-Chair of the Committee. Okay, and Stephanie. Good afternoon. I am Stephanie Jerome. I represent Brandon, Pittsburgh and Sudbury and I am the ranking member. Representative Dickinson is not with us this afternoon. She's from St. Albans Town, but she's back on the committee. She started on commerce and went to corrections and institutions and judiciary and found her way back to commerce. So we're glad to have her. She has a lot of experience with UI too. And then we have Representative Kitzmiller. Well, hello, everybody. So yeah, I'm Warren Kitzmiller representing Montpelier. Back on commerce after what I think three bienniums up on GovOps. I miss my good friends on GovOps, but I'm very happy to be back on commerce, which I gotta say feels more like a natural home to me. I was on this committee for 12 or 14 years. I've been around since I've done a time. I've been around long enough that I remember when that unemployment insurance computer system was almost new. And I'll add that he's a former chair of this committee as well. Paul. Good afternoon Paul Martin representing the Franklin five district. I'm a first term legislator and I represent the towns of Franklin Highgate, Berkshire and Richford. Nice to be here. Emma. Good morning all Emma Mulvaney Stanek I represent Burlington's Old North End and New North End, and I am a first term legislator. Logan. Good afternoon Logan Nicole representing Ludlow, Mount Holly and Shrewsbury. This is my second session last session I was in human services. Michael. Hello there, Michael Nigro I represent Bennington and I am also first term legislator. Patrick. I'm Patrick Seymour I represent the towns of Sutton Burke and Linden. This is my second term I was formerly on judiciary. Kirk. Good afternoon I'm Kirk White I represent the towns of Bethel Rochester Stockbridge and Pittsfield. This is my first term as a legislator and I am clerk of the committee. And Amy. Hi everyone, Amy to disco I am the committee assistant to house commerce for the second year. That's the commerce crew. So, now, Madam chair if you'd like to introduce your crew. Thank you, Mr chair. I am Sarah Copeland hands us I represent Bradford fairly and West fairly. Happy to be here with you today thank you to director would and Commissioner Harrington for your willingness to come and help us understand the, the ways that the UI system has been stress tested this year and you know of course we, we have also appreciated your, your help in in resolving constituent concerns and questions along the way so thank you so much for being so responsive that way. My vice chair, john cannon. John cannon representing Wilmington Whitingham and Halifax in the southern part of the state. Good afternoon Rob LaClaire I represent Barry town. I guess I am the ranking member, and I have always been a member of the hard working and talented government operations committee. Bob Hooper. Good afternoon I'm Bob Hooper from the new north end of Burlington Dam near Colchester. My second term government operations all the time and state employee beforehand so that's my route I got a call I'd say about 23 minutes ago from a constituent who said, I'm having trouble with my unemployment. So, this is timely. Thank you. Mike McCarthy. Hi, I'm Mike McCarthy, I represents an almond city and the southern part of St. Albans town. And I am a third term legislator I've served two terms on house transportation so I'm new to go box. How Colston. Good afternoon, I'm how Colston I represent when you ski and a small part of Burlington. I'm in my second term, and my second term on this committee. Mike Marwicky. Good afternoon, I'm Mike Marwicky. I'm one of two members of the Wyndham for district here now in South and Wyndham, Wyndham County I represent Plotney. Dumberson Westminster and I want to thank the commissioner for the help he has provided with many of my constituents and for for making himself personally available for us to contact them and help out some difficult situations. Thank you. Peter Anthony. Yes, good morning and welcome commissioner. My name is Peter Anthony of course and I represent Barry city, together with one other seatmate. This is my first year on this committee, second year in the legislature previously I served on ways and means. And I thank your staff for intervening. Many times to fix problems that have come up and welcome. Thank you. Hi, thank you. I'm Tonya be hopes key I represent Essex town I'm a first term legislator and I also would like to thank you for the work that you have done to navigate this unprecedented time and look forward to continuing to work with you on how we go forward from here. Mark Higley. Hello, Mark Higley, I represent lol J Westfield Troy and Eden. I served eight years on gov ops in the past couple years on ag and forestry couple years on energy and technology and full circle back to gov ops. I'm Samantha Lefebvre. Thank you. I am Samantha Lefebvre. I am a first term legislator. I am a district needs for Orange County District one, the towns of Chelsea current orange Berkshire Washington and Williams town. And I'd also like to send my thanks for all the work that you have done through this time. And our wonderful committee assistant Andrea. Hi, good afternoon. This is my second session with the House Committee on government operations. I retired from the Department of Labor a few years ago. So hello to the commissioner and director. Welcome everyone thank you for joining us this afternoon. So commissioner. Thank you if you'd like to kick it off. You and Cameron here this afternoon. Thank you for giving us some some of your time I know you're extremely busy. Thank you, Mr Chair, Madam Chair, for the record Michael Harrington Commissioner Department of Labor. First of all, I'll point out that I'm glad to see the name Michael is strong and steady even in the committees. As it is in the administration. I will also point out, you know, many of you. I do know, especially those on house commerce, however, many of you I know by name only, and that's probably because of emails, we've exchanged back and forth over the past year. So I just, I will, you know, extend my thank you to you. You know, in, in totality, you know, this past year has been a challenging one as you know. Each of you that have reached out to me have done so with compassion and understanding and a true desire to help your constituents and and but you've been also very respectful and an understanding of the pressures the department has been under. And it's interesting because as we talk about this and do a year in review. You know, it's certainly not. We are not where we were maybe 10 months ago. But I think, because a lot of that initial surge has passed. And I'm not complaining here. The light has been maybe redirected to other areas like vaccine rollout and distribution and maybe less so on unemployment insurance. But behind the scenes and probably not known publicly so much is that we still operate at a max level of capacity and pressure on the system, both from a technology perspective, but also a staffing perspective. There is not a day that goes by that there isn't some urgency or fire that needs to be put out on top of just the idea of needing to process the number of claims that come in each and every week. And I say that really more as a recognition to the staff that works here at the department, who are still under a mandatory overtime directive and have been working. You know what is likely 50 to 55 hours or more a week and working well into the evening. For example, we had even some of our staff working at the o'clock this morning as we try to beat the clock and deadline on issuing 1099s to meet our federal obligation. So, you know, once we once we meet one obligation there's usually another one coming quickly behind it, whether it's a new program that needs to be launched or a new expectation, or even just part of our, our normal practice. Unemployment insurance is is a pretty tricky situation. In many cases, you know, in conversations I've had with others, it can be one of if not the most complex systems out there with regards to requirements and eligibility, even more so in some cases than healthcare and Medicaid. One of those reasons is because someone's eligibility for unemployment insurance is actually determined each and every week. So it's not like we issue a determination on eligibility that lasts that person the full range of their time on unemployment. They literally have to log in and recertify on a weekly basis for benefits and anytime they're doing that there's always the opportunity to create a circumstance where there's an issue with either the information or the way the claim was completed. So, you know, every, every week, we have new claims that need to be adjudicated that even could have been adjudicated multiple times in the past but because the way they are filled out, it may cause a flag to be raised on a claim so unlike any other program eligibility occurs each and every time someone files for benefits, which is on a weekly basis. I would also say that until COVID-19 and many of those who are familiar with the Department of Labor know this, you know, we, the administration of the program has been fully federally funded and is usually calculated based on volume, and that volume is traditionally tied to a lower unemployment rate. So being one of the states that has had the lowest unemployment rate in the country leading up to the pandemic. We were extremely thinly staffed, if you will, leading in and in some cases might say we were also severely understaffed and underfunded by the federal government leading into COVID-19. Cameron can share more but at one point we had in a division that traditionally runs about 65 to 70 employees, we had 25 vacancies, five of which were at the management level, leading into COVID-19 so you can imagine the, the added pressure and burden that that put on the unit right out of the gate. Lots has happened since COVID-19. There's been in many cases the addition of what seems like copious number of federal benefit programs, all of which have needed to be created from scratch and stood up using a 50 year old mainframe and or a brand new piece of software never used by the department before. So we are not any different than any other state. Every state has found themselves in this situation. Federally unemployment insurance turned 85 in 2020, and I would gather to say that during those 25 years it changed very little. And yet in the year 2020, it changed a whole lot. And a lot of that was shown through the various programs that came out in 2020 to provide added relief and necessary benefits for individuals in crisis. He created numerous challenges, and we can certainly jump right into to questions. But as all of you have probably experienced, you know, the, the volume in which came through the door was staggering at any given time leading up to the pandemic. We operated our system with about anywhere from 3000 receiving benefits at any given time during the spring summer and fall, it was usually closer to 3000 during the winter season was closer to 6000. Even today, we are issuing benefits to approximately 35,000 claimants so even today we are five times more volume than we were going into the pandemic. And at one point in the pandemic, we reached a total of issuing 90,000 claims and paying out 90,000 claims to individuals. To date, we've received over 130,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits. We've paid out more than $1.2 billion in benefits. And that's across all the programs. And even today, we, if you were to ask me if we are adequately staffed for the current or the future, I would say no. There are a lot of reasons for that. Some of it is trying to find talent and fill vacant positions. Other pieces of that rely on federal funding, which, while there has been a lot of federal funding put aside for benefits to date our state for just the administration of regular UI has received about $3 million. To put that in perspective, the Medicaid program in a quarter receives over $20 million. So there is a big difference in terms of the administrative funding that comes into the department to administer unemployment insurance. So we've got a lot of, a lot of different irons in the fire, if you will, our staff are amazingly committed. We had probably I would think one of the highest number of returning retirees that came back to state government to help through this and they continue to help to this day. But we're certainly not out of the woods, but, but better than we were back in April, May, June, and so on. So I will just let Cameron fill in the blanks and whatever I misspoke on and then we can get to questions. Thank you commissioner. I got to sit with the House Commerce Committee this morning so happy to be back this afternoon for the record Cameron Wood. I'm the unemployment insurance division director for the Department of Labor. I'm really glad to be back with our House Commerce Committee and glad to be able to sit in with House GovOps. It's been many years since I've been in the government operations committee. Back when I was working with legislative council, I think may have been the last time but I know some familiar faces, Representative Higley, LaClaire, others, you know, so happy to see you guys again. I don't want to go on and add too much more other than what the commissioner has stated. I think very eloquent job kind of expressing the challenges that we faced over the past year. I would just also add that I know it has been extremely frustrating for a lot of members with the legislature who are simply trying to help resolve issues for your constituents and Vermonters who are in, you know, what is usually one of the most frustrating periods of time in their life. And, you know, I know it has been, you know, a frustrating time in some instances. We've, you know, had a lot of work on our plate over the past year. There's a lot of things that we can improve on a lot of things that we can do better. We recognize that and we're always open to feedback and happy to be here to help answer some questions to give some context as to sometimes where the system is designed that makes it sometimes not efficient but also areas where we can improve as a department. I can improve, you know, with our division but I do want to echo what the commissioner mentioned, you know, which is just the sheer volume that that we've been able to administer. And that's just on the claimant side, you know, we also have 24,000 employers that were obligated to serve. And, you know, throughout 2020 we were still having to register businesses and, and, you know, close business accounts down collect unemployment contributions on a quarterly basis and collect the wage reports that come from employers. So that is just as critical in the UI system to ensure that claimants are going out the door so really try to take every opportunity that I get I know the commissioner does as he just did but really to thank our staff. You know, they have been working over time for coming up on now 12 months and really proud of the work that they've done we haven't been perfect throughout the whole time but you know we've we've I think really done. A lot of work to help for monitors and you know the numbers I think speak for themselves so really happy to be here. Really want to be helpful and and in providing context and information to you all so you can help make informed decisions so just know that we recognize that, you know, we are always here to try to improve on the process and help people and that's pretty rewarding that we do get to help and and always want to make it more successful so Commissioner I thought everything you said was spot on so no need for for any supplements there and Mr chair I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you can Commissioner could could you just can you let us know anything about what you're hearing from the federal government. As far as helping with providing new it systems. I know and maybe it might be it might be good special for my new committee members and also for gov ops members to understand what happened with the consortium that we had joined a few years ago. And then give us a little bit of that history to. And that was something that was to upgrade the IT system also. Yeah, so thank you Mr chair and the, the UI mainframe, written in COBOL turned 50 years old on June 9 of 2020. It's been a long standing desire I think of the state and the department to upgrade this system. We're not the only state with an aging mainframe but ours is of, I think relatively critical nature than many other states. It's not necessarily a stable system. It's a lot of the living history if you will, in terms of, you know, it's one thing to know COBOL code it's another thing to know how the system was designed and developed using that code and what changes have been made over the past 50 years, and how the system function you know it in that respect we have lost a lot of the the historical knowledge through retirements and attrition here at the department. And that has really handicapped our ability to, you know, effectively manage this mainframe system. We've done a great job, but every day is a challenge. And I could run you a laundry list of challenges we ran into just this week, but every week is the same. We were in a consortium we've been in two consortiums in the past we were in a consortium up until February of 2020. We received federally federal funding for that consortium. We were in it with the state of Idaho and the state of North Dakota. We got to the point in the consortium where we had essentially depleted all of our federal funding, and we're going to need to start using state funding, and also reached a point where it was very clear that the solution, we were getting what was being produced for us was not of high enough quality and to our standards, nor was it going to be delivered on time. And so it really got, it really became a question of, of funding and trajectory. By the time we didn't necessarily, I don't want to say we stepped away from the consortium, but I will say the three members had many very honest conversations and in the end, the governors of those three states decided to dissolve the consortium and go their separate ways. At the time of disillusion, we were still looking at probably another 18 months before going live so even if we had stayed in the consortium, it would have done us no good with regards to COVID-19. We were still a year and a half away. We still, having been in the consortium for four years, had not received a fully functioning piece of code that we could test from end to end. And so we would get bits and pieces that would run in and of themselves, but when put together, we still had not been able to fully do an end to end test on the system that was being provided. And it left us, you know, very concerned about the quality of the code we were receiving, the lack of documentation, and really the way the project was being run. And so as a state we decided to step away. If you remember the first draft of the Heroes Act back in August of 2020 held a lot of funding for UI modernization. However, the most recent bill that, a relief bill that was actually passed, had no money for modernization in it. And I think part of that was just the desire to make sure our benefit programs continued to fund benefits for claimants. And obviously, you know, for any of us watching the news, we know that there is a desire to come back with additional relief packages in the coming weeks, and years I'm assuming. And I know that it remains a top priority for the states and for our national association for state workforce agencies. But today there has been no federal funding provided to states for modernization since COVID-19. Thank you. And I believe, I think in that last consortium we were in I think it was in Idaho that was actually the controlling state of the of the three. Yeah, it was a unique situation. In this case, you know what we've seen in other consortiums is, you know, two or more states get together. They identify a third party vendor to produce the product. In this case, you know, three states got together, and there were other states that had come and gone out of that consortium. But in this case there were these three states and Idaho was the lead state doing the production. That was mainly because there was a 1.0 version that was released in Idaho. And so that we were enhancing the system that they had already built once and deployed. And I'll tell you, though, it's very different to deploy a system in your own state using your own statute and your own system, which you know, intimately, then providing code and and standing it up in another state. And I think that's where we ran into a lot of a lot of issues. So we ended up with Idaho is the lead state which also meant they received most of the funding, which also tied the other states in the consortium Vermont and North Dakota in tied their hands in their ability to actually make meaningful decisions involving how the system was built and deployed. Because in the end, the state that owned the code and the state that had all the money really was able to drive the train in the direction they wanted to go. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Commissioner Harrington. I have a couple of questions that mean that the unprecedented volume 130,000 initial claims for the state. And the problems of processing that I'm trying to figure out the degree to which the computer system itself presented a log jam or a problem. Then the second part of the question is going forward, I hope you're not suggesting that we hold on to the same system that we definitely need to change that. And the third part of that is, what do we need to do in order to do that because it's not in the governor's recommend to spend a few million dollars on a new system. So just could you give us a little history on that. So, I think it might help to for me to kind of put things in perspective. So what we ended up having to do as part of our response to the pandemic was really Jerry Rig or Daisy chain various systems together. And so, leading up to COVID-19 unemployment insurance over the years had gone from a face to face interaction to here in Vermont and over the phone interaction, and very little interaction was done online weekly filings were done online but for someone to actually open a claim they had to call and talk to the claims representative who could walk them through their opening of their claim. We didn't actually have an online form for them to fill out when COVID hit. So that became our initial action was, how do we get a system in place that can take a claim over, you know, over the internet. So it comes in through a Salesforce application that claim is then checked against or run through our mainframe to determine whether or not the claimant is eligible for regular unemployment insurance. So, are they monetarily eligible for regular unemployment insurance, are they eligible because of their least separation circumstance for regular unemployment insurance. And if not, then they are that offered the opportunity to fill out the PUA application. And that is partially because of the federal requirement that someone must be deemed. If someone is deemed eligible for even $1 of regular unemployment insurance, they cannot be eligible for PUA. And so, there is a cross check that has to happen before someone can receive PUA benefits to make sure they didn't fit into the regular UI program first. And there is a lot of back and forth of data between multiple systems. When we talk about modernization of the UI system as a whole, if you were to ask me today, what do you need and how long would it take, it would likely take somewhere between two to three years to design develop and roll out. And it would probably cost somewhere between $25 and $35 million. And so, when we talk about funding for a program, you know, when the governor is recommending a few million dollars really what he's doing is breaking the modernization up into phases that can be completed within a 12 month budget cycle. And so, it would do us no good to allocate $40 million in a budget cycle, because we wouldn't be able to spend it all within the 12 month budget cycle. So, we have broken the modernization up into multiple phases, and we'll be funding phase by phase I think in the end though the hope would be that the federal government comes through with modernization dollars for all states that are in need. But, you know, I also think we cannot hope and pray for that to happen in a timely fashion, we have to make sure we've got a plan in place in case it doesn't. Cameron, I see you have something. Yeah, I just want to provide a little more context to to what happened in the very beginning. Because, you know, I really see it as a combination of not having individuals available, but I really do think there was a lot of compounding systematic system problems that had to be identified prioritized and then, you know, addressed and so I really want to take a quick dive a little deeper into what the commissioner identified there with the daisy chain analogy. You know, as the commissioner mentioned, you know, prior to the pandemic, we did not have online access. It was telephone and the benefit there is it allows us to prevent more fraud, if individuals have to actually call and provide information. But it also gave us the opportunity to have that conversation with a claimant to say, here are your next steps, here's what you can expect in the mail. If there's an issue on your claim, here's the issue that we've identified on your claim, you're going to need to go into adjudications and here's an expected turnaround time. So, it, it gave us that opportunity to provide that level of communication. What, what happened very quickly was we were overwhelmed with volume that was entirely unmanageable. I mean, I would say even today, I don't know with the staffing levels that we have if you mean keep in mind it was, it was over the weekend and at the beginning of a week where it was announced that all essential businesses would be closed. And, you know, so we had we went from taking, you know, 500 calls a day with the claim center that we had to, you know, by the time we were able to stand up, you know, commissioner I think we had well over 100,000 phone calls hitting our systems a day. And so the, the problem there was, you know, not only as a commissioner mentioned did we have to identify getting an initial application stood up online. And then how do you take that information with a 21st century web application and feed that information into a mainframe system. But then we're, then we're in a position where, because, you know, that was delayed, because it had to be built. We now have all of these individuals that need to potentially go into the claimant portal and file back weeks of claims. Our claimant portal was not designed to do that our claimant portal is only designed to allow someone to file for the prior week so for the committee here. I'm going to try to, I mentioned this to the commissioner before we jumped on I'm trying to try to explain when we hit UI things so the way you I works is you're always filing for the previous week. When you're filing this week you're actually filing to say that you were unemployed last week. And our system was designed even for the weekly certifications to only allow one back week. And if you got behind and filing, you had to pick up the phone and call the claim center in order to get caught up. Why do we have that, because our rules only allow for the back dating of one week. It's a fraud prevention mechanism so if somebody gets behind and filing, and they call us we get to say, Well, why didn't you file your claims is it because you weren't doing a work search is it because you're not able and available so it's a, it's a, it's a fraud tool to prevent individuals who are So, so then we run into a situation where we get the online claims stood up but now we have, you know, 10s of thousands of people who need to have their claim backdated, who we have to go in and fix the claim and portal to allow them to go in and file those back weeks so On top of that, you know, we're, we're trying to stand up a call center with, you know, 200 plus agents, many of whom have zero understanding of unemployment insurance, you know, and so I just wanted to, I guess dive a little bit deeper into that to, to, to really emphasize that, you know, we were, as every state across the country was entirely overwhelmed with numbers that just are not manageable. You know the system that the main frame actually did what it was supposed to do. The problem is the ancillary systems were not designed to allow this volume and to allow individuals to do what needed to be done to catch up. And then on top of that you had a lot of individuals who did not understand the unemployment insurance system did not understand how it works. And so they were answering questions incorrectly. And that would traditionally flag for us the need to investigate. And, you know, unfortunately, we, we tried in the middle of the moment to, you know, course correct for people to provide them direction of how to answer questions correctly. They were still tripping all over themselves. On top of that we had not only individuals who were eligible for unemployment who had lost their job, but we also had the tens of thousands of self employed people who were trying to file for unemployment, who were never going to be eligible for regular UI. And so, unfortunately, it was, you know, 100,000 people, you know, trying to access a system all at the same time. And the department, you know, trying as quickly as we could to get a contractor staff set up and trying to get them trained as quickly as we could on unemployment and the parameters of unemployment, how it works. So, I just, yeah, I just wanted to take that time to extrapolate on that a little bit because it was an insurmountable challenge, in my opinion. Thank you. Representative Hooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Commissioner director. I originally wanted to ask about why or if our cadre of laws is so different from other states that we couldn't buy something off the shelf that some other state is already using and make it functional beyond the hardware problem but Commissioner Harrington in your opening remarks, you took me way off into a different stratosphere so I'm going to ask you something that might seem a little odd because we're looking at things that are kind of past performance and I want to talk to you about looking forward in the personnel aspect. And it's a little obscure I would admit. As you probably know budget wise we're having significant problems retirement wise, and Treasurer Pierce has put a proposal forward that many employees are looking at as sort of draconian and there's a lot of conversation about, I'm going to get out before I get either more time to work or less benefit to live on. Are you aware at this point because you've, you've said that initially you were short staffed you were overwhelmed you're still working overtime. How many employees do you have that are within that five year window that they could buy themselves out and walk out the door tomorrow. And if that happened, how decimated would the agency be. And generally since your, your staff contains a lot of specialized skills. How long would it take you to recover. Yeah. Thank you for that. Great question. It is, it is somewhat of a concern in that it really, it really depends I haven't done a full analysis of all 250 employees within the department or the 75 state employees that work within the UI division. But it will impact some. You know, it's, it's not necessarily the total number. It's how many occur in in one area or two areas. And I think there are at least at the top of my mind, two or three individuals that may take that option. And if they did so it would leave us in a very tough position. And when we talk about recovery of department resources. You know, a lot of people are even asking, you know, why can someone still call the claim and assistant center and get bad information. When I was having a conversation with colleagues from other states the other day, you know, it, it takes roughly a year of intense training and one on one coaching just for someone to become comfortable in administering the UI program. It really takes somewhere around two to three years to actually become a subject matter expert in administering unemployment insurance. So the fact that we stood up a call center in two weeks, and then receive questions as to why these people don't know what they're talking about. You know, it was obvious, it was obvious to us on this end why. And I think, even so, you know, when we're talking about refilling ranks. It's a, it's going to be a long time. And by long I mean, you know, three to five years before we can build up the knowledge base that I think either will be lost or has been lost over the past four years even just since I've joined the department. So we, we are moving in that direction. But again, you know, it takes a significant amount of time to actually get an individual to be a subject matter expert in the field of unemployment insurance. I hope that answered your question if not I can expound. Yeah, I did. I have a follow up though you also mentioned. I mean, when this first hit, I put out a plea to retirees to, you know, if you're sitting around you're not in Florida, consider going back to help. How many responses in that line did you get I never. So Cameron you're probably better to answer this, you know, even just we had employees that had just retired, who immediately walked back through the door, we had an employee who retired over the summer of coven and then started working temporarily after her retirement from remind me, set North Carolina, Florida, Colorado. And, you know, so we have people across the country, who are still helping to administer the Vermont UI program. Yeah, very, very quickly, I'll add to that I every recent retiree that I can think of is currently working for the UI division, every individual who has recently retired and when I say recently I would say within the past 12. 12 to 18 months is has most of them voluntarily offered to come back. It is amazing to me, the dedication that some of these individuals have to their jobs, you know, and the work that we do here so really, really excited that a lot of them did offer to come back. And most of them reached out to us, asking if they could come back. And the ones that have retired over the past year during coven have elected to stay on in a temporary capacity to to assist us. And then, Representative Hooper, if I may, I'll try to be very quick because I imagine some of the other committee members may have your first question. As the commissioner mentioned in the beginning of his comments, you know unemployment insurance is extremely complex. And, you know, us do well. It's a federal state partnership. And I've heard the number thrown around 75 to 80% of the unemployment insurance program is equivalent across the states that that may be true. And there are some questions that we all are required to adhere to, because it's in federal law. But, and there are certain, you know, units that all of us have to have we all, we all interact with employers we all have a program integrity function, but the, you know, the 25 to 30% 20 to 30% that is different is extremely complex and very complex. As we were just talking with the House Commerce Committee this morning, just looking at something like disregarded earnings, which is treated entirely different in New Hampshire than it is Vermont in Vermont, it's 50% of your earnings are disregarded in New Hampshire I believe it's 30%. And so, you know, one would think well it's just a percentage but when it comes to what wages are reportable, what employers are reportable. And how that interacts as the Commissioner mentioned earlier every week is a review of the claim. And, and so there's just it's, it does get very complex, and unfortunately, there aren't many, you know, large it vendors that operate in this space. And, you know, there aren't many that are consistently successful in taking a system and implementing it in different states. And so it just it. Unfortunately, it's not a situation where we, we can take something off the shelf. It does require a lot of individualized tweak to tweaks to get it to get it into production. I think, if I would add just one thing I have learned is that the federal government requires states to do many things, but they leave it to the states to determine how they do it. And so, a good example is the required work search. So, under the federal definition every state must have a work search, but they leave it to the states to define what a what their state work search requirement will be. And so, if you can imagine there are probably 50 different types of work searches out there in terms of what is considered a successful work search requirement by state. I think the other thing I would also point out is the changes that even occurred in the system, just in the past 12 months are are substantial. Every states response to coven 19 was different based on the state and the sectors that were impacted and the types of populations that were impacted so every state responded differently to coven 19. Now they may have done somewhat similar things, but down at the micro level, those things actually are very different from one state to the next. Thank you both. Yes, sir. Representative Mulvaney Stanek. Thank you, Mr chair. The letter was submitted earlier this week to the House Commerce Committee and I know it's posted on our website from Vermont legal aid. And it raised I mean part of the problem here today is that we're thinking about trying to be high level think about the systems. We're thinking about IT for example things will improve the system whenever whatever date is we get out of the pandemic, of course but there were some pretty concerning concerns in that letter that Vermont legal aid raised and I believe a copy was sent to the commissioner a couple weeks ago so you're probably familiar with it commissioner. And I know I at least have received even just two days ago constituents who echo the concerns in the legal aid letter that were raised and so I'm just curious. This is the department dealing with what seems to be can't be just my district, the backlog of delayed payments either through the PUA program or just the regular UA program as well as just claim it decisions seem also to be backlogged and I can understand July but in terms of remedy. I'm just curious how we're going to get there so that for monitors aren't left in limbo I have one constituent who still has approved claims that hasn't received a payment since July, and that's a very long time to wait. I will say, I will caveat everything, and I will, I will give one ask of the committee, and I wish I could ask the media outlets to do the same. And that is remember that there are three sides to every claim situation. There is the claimants perspective. And there is the employer's perspective, and there is the department's perspective. And so what we traditionally find is that, whether it's from a legislator or from a special interest group or from, you know, the media, when they take one side of a claim, or one perspective of a claim that is only one third of the information actually specific to that claim and so when you say, you know I have a constituent who hasn't been paid since July. You know, there are a lot of different factors that may go into that. I can tell you that there really are not outstanding claims from July, in the sense that the department may have already issued an initial determination on that claim, either by saying an individual to that they are eligible or ineligible for benefits. And if they, that individual then chooses to appeal that decision. There are actually three levels of appeal within the appeal process. It's a quasi judicial process. There are administrative law judges, there's sworn testimony under oath, there is collection of evidence. The first level of appeal goes to an administrative law judge, the second level of appeal goes to an appointed employment security board, and the third level can go all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court. So, when you say there may be someone from July, who whose claim has not been paid. It may be that the department has already issued its position on the claim, but either the claimant or the employer is now contesting the claim, and now it is moving through the appeal process. And if you take the appeal process from beginning to end, that that could take many months, if not a year to move through all three levels of the appeal process within the department. We can potentially have two, two areas where we issue a more comprehensive determination on a claim. The first is adjudications and that happens within the UI unit. I should say first a claim comes in, there's an initial determination done based on the reason for separation, or whether someone is monetarily eligible meaning they've, they've earned enough wages to be eligible for UI. The mainframe actually calculates using an algorithm somebody's determination, and they may then receive a determination from the department saying your weekly benefit amount is zero because you have not earned enough wages to be eligible for unemployment insurance. We then have an adjudications unit which will do fact finding on the specifics of a particular claim. We fluctuate anywhere from at the height of the pandemic, more than 90 days in adjudications from the data claim enters adjudications to the date it leaves adjudications. And, and at the low part, we were able to get down to less than a 30 day turnaround. However, I believe right now we're hovering somewhere around 45 days to 60 days, which all has to do with volume, and, and the number of claims coming in so when we reached a point in the season with seasonal unemployment, that number jumped back up to probably closer to 45 to 60 days. But there is fact finding that happens both at the claimant and the employer level in those cases. And to reference the point in here, you know the the legal aid actually makes a statement to prioritize adjudication of claims with qualified claim and experience claims adjudicators. And that is the part that is harder to achieve, because we can, we can anoint anybody to be a claim adjudicator whether they are actually qualified to adjudicate claims is a very different scenario. So, in these cases, we have our most experienced individuals adjudicating claims that come in through the door. Once we issue a determination from an adjudicated claim, the claimant and the employer have appeal rights, and either one, and in some cases the department also has an appeal right to some extent as well. So, once we start the journey down the appeal process. That is a totally different avenue that happens within our appeals division, outside of the unemployment insurance process, and comes with its own set of legal standards. So, again, you know, when you ask about backlogs. We do have individuals who are in appeals or in adjudications. The average turnaround time is somewhere around 45 to 60 days at the moment our goal is to be under 30 days. We also had to reallocate some staff over the past few weeks to another area of urgent need. And so there are only so many skilled UI specialists to go around. And so we do tend to have to redirect staff each week to whatever the priority is. So that priority could be a claimant priority. It could be a federal government priority, or in some cases it could be an audit priority, depending on what's happening, either here or at the federal level so there are many different components to those. And the other piece I would add is, you know, in appeals, we, we run somewhere between 60 and 90 days from the date of an appeal to the date of a hearing, and a determination is usually issued the following week. There are, I will also say there are, there are thousands, hundreds if not thousands of claims that go to adjudications each week, and hundreds of appeals that go to appeals each week. So, you know, when, when we talk about, you know, how quickly can we turn around. There, there's a limit on how, how fast that can happen with their with the skilled and qualified resources we have. I did look through the letter from delayed, you know, there are five areas that they identify and, and I plan to provide legal aid with a written response to those five areas. The first asks us to devote staff time to clearing the backlog of initial claim determinations. I will say that there, there really isn't a backlog of initial claim determinations, but it depends on how you define determination. So they are issued an initial determination relatively quickly, unless they have answered in a way that has caused their claim to go to adjudications, or if we are provided details from their employer that caused their claim to go to adjudications. The second asks that we expedite review by trained adjudicators to minimize delay in the adjudication process and the issuance of claims. I can tell you that all of our skilled and trained adjudicators are adjudicating cases right now, and we have added to those ranks over previous weeks. The third asks that we cease recruitment and collection of all contested overpayments until after an administrative law judge decision is issued and asked that the administrative law judge wave collection of overpayments when the claimant is without fault. And that any time we are legally allowed to wave overpayments we have if the, if the claimant is not at fault and if the overpayment was a result of an action by the department. Only until recent federal guidance have states been allowed to wave overpayments of federal benefit programs. And so in many cases early on, the state was not allowed to wave overpayments of federally paid benefits. To the first part of that, we do have a statutory obligation for how we identify overpayments and and how we recoup those overpayments and the way we do that is in line with current statute. The fourth asks that we allow 60 day appeal deadline during the state of emergency and while the department remains inconsistent in its ability to respond to direct inquiries and schedule appeal hearings. I will, along those lines I have asked about what it would take to extend the, the what is currently a 30 day appeal deadline to a 60 day appeal deadline, and based on the information I've received I believe it will take a statutory change to allow that to occur. I will say that one thing that's of interest is that the time it takes to turn around an adjudicated claim is actually currently roughly the same time it took to turn around an adjudicated claim prior to the pandemic. So, you know from that perspective our staff has done an amazing job, making sure that we didn't exceed the amount of time that we were at going into the pandemic. And then finally, they asked that, or they state that they would support resources to the department to increase staffing and training. And while in, in theory, I think Cameron and I would both agree that we would support any additional staff and training, but with that comes a resource cost. And, and like I said at, at the moment, you know we are really resource constrained, not just on the staff side but on the finance side, with very limited federal dollars coming from the ministry of these programs. You know they're leading into COVID-19. The entire UDI department was made up of 70 staff people. Like I said we had a 25 person vacancy in that area. And we had a total department budget for unemployment insurance of $6.5 million. And so we were running our entire UI department on $6.5 million annually, which is not much given having 60 employees working in that in that area. So, and along with that includes not just staff but overhead maintenance and operation of equipment and software and the mainframe, and all the ADS staff and support that goes into ensuring the operation of those systems. And $6.5 million was not a lot. And so, and today we've only received about $3 million in additional, I would say, undesignated or unobligated above base funding for UI administration. So, again, I think we, we would certainly support that and we support everything that is in this letter. But there are certain requirements, restrictions, considerations that come with each of those that hopefully I've been able to outline here today. Cam, feel free to jump in. I would love to get a word in at some point because that was a very long answer. So Cameron, if it's relevant back to my first question, that's fine, but I would love to get the floor back at some point. Yeah, just, just very quickly, I was just going to add that, you know, I think the, it's compounded by the new programs, especially the PUA program. PUA is brand new. It, you know, did not exist prior to March and even to date. I mean, I send emails very frequently to USDOL asking about PUA eligibility because it is not very clear. So, you know, USDOL holds us to account for administering the program correctly. And it's just, there are so many nuanced situations for both self employed and individuals who aren't eligible for regular UI as to whether they meet PUA eligibility. And so, you know, I just, I know that there are some situations where those determinations can take a while usually because we're trying to get the right answer from USDOL as the commissioner mentioned. We were very, very hesitant to want to put someone into PUA, backdate them all the way to March, pay them, you know, $30,000, $20,000 to find out you weren't eligible. And the guidance at the time was they have to pay every dime of that back. There were no overpayments. The federal guidance even said, even if it's department error, PUA dollars must be paid back. So, I recognize, I know the commissioner does too that, you know, there could be situations where someone may have received a determination and may not be aware of it or there could be some nuance there. So, in turning the floor back over to you, Representative, I just will say too, if you have a constituent who feels like they haven't been given service or it's not clear as to where they are, please send that to myself and the commissioner. I will take a quick opportunity to plug the commissioner here just to say, I know that he works with our assistant UI director every single evening to go through claimants and troubleshoot them and try to get them back. So, you know, I know the commissioner did a good job there of expressing the nuance, but if you have somebody in that situation send it to us because I know the commissioner makes that his top priority. Thank you. And I did send that through Dustin through the governor's office a couple days ago. So, in theory, this constituent is in your hands now. Again, and I just, I, you know, I see, I see the job of representatives of course as well as I'm sure all of you and we're all here for the same purpose to make that for Monters have a fair shake and accessing benefits and navigating a lot of red tape of brand new programs that yes are complicated and doing things carefully I completely mon the same page for that. And, you know, I make no assumptions about my neighbors and and their cases this woman is a self employed person so that takes one of the triangle sides out so she's the one source for two of those three points you made earlier commissioner about the complications of adjudicating a claim. And I'm just also still still hold some concern around, you know, using the call center and what you said, director but I think you said something online. You know the challenges of people who have to quickly get up to speed on a very complex system that is different in every state and I'm sure Maximus does this for 49 or 50 states or whatever it might be. And he puts for monsters right into yet another gap if they get told the wrong answer and they get flagged, then they're kicked into a totally different queue. And I'm speaking about those for monitors and wanting to remedy that scenario. So those folks aren't left in limbo because they call back five or six times and they get the wrong answer, which you said has happened and helping those folks navigate it I think that's, I think all the other representatives on this in this hearing can agree to that so that's where I'm coming from and seeking so thanks for hearing me out on that case. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, representative representative the whole ski. I said that right. Did great thank you. I am curious, given that this system is so complicated and there was a under staffing even before the pandemic what the plans are and what supports are needed to train and retain staff as you've said it takes years to get someone to the point where they're not making mistakes. So how do we best do that going forward and learn from where we're at now. One of the biggest challenges right now is is the unknown, right and so originally when we were looking at the height of the pandemic, we didn't know how long it was going to last right was it going to last weeks was it going to last months is it going to last two years, which makes planning and preparing for staffing very difficult, because these are also all people you have made an obligation to in terms of employment to then turn around and if, if things change, either you're required to retain them, or you're required to retain them to to leave employment as well. But the, I would say the biggest and can jump in here if I'm wrong, but the biggest challenge right now is the unknown with regards to long term administrative funding. And so us do well is really great at, you know, giving one time money. We have a lot of it but when they do it's typically one time with a very short life expectancy. And so that has been in my mind our biggest challenge. You know it's one thing to receive funding. It's another thing to receive continued funding that would support long term employment. So that's that is my biggest challenge Cameron. Yeah, I will echo the commissioner exactly that that is exactly what I would say, you know our program unfortunately is is entirely federally funded we we in the past have not. We've tried to manage as best we can without having to come to the state to ask for additional dollars for administrative purposes. As the commissioner mentioned the funding ebbs and flows with the workload, and we have always been understaffed as far as I've been here. We're fortunate that we've never had to lay anyone off. But as the commissioner mentioned, you know, before the pandemic we were in a kind of a vacancy saving, you know, perspective to try to manage to our budget. The thing is that puts us kind of at the whim of the federal government as far as when they, when they decide to pass a budget as I know you all are aware sometimes that is the day before hours before their budget expires. You know, and it's only on a one year cycle sometimes it's on a three month cycle. You know, we were, we were our admin budget for this program year was a reduction from what it was last year so we're in the middle of a pandemic with numbers that we've never seen before. And, and our budget was cut. And so, right now I'm looking at it, you know, we're doing the best we can to staff up and, and trying to find every single avenue of funding that we have available to help support us but you know, I'm looking at a budget deficit right now we are. And so it's very challenging to, you know, ramp up more staff than than what we're trying to pull in right now so and, and it becomes increasingly challenging to recruit individuals in those situations because a lot of a lot of positions we we receive are potentially temporary, which doesn't come with you know benefits attached to that and it's it's difficult to maintain individuals in those positions. We have received limited service positions that we're trying to recruit for keeping in mind to you know it's it's just another piece of the puzzle that we have to think about. You know, let's say we fund someone's position for for six months to 12 months when we have to let that individual go because maybe we have a funding decrease. So we're then responsible for that person's unemployment benefits and so we have to calculate that out because we're a reimbursable employer as the state of Vermont so when we lay those individuals off we have to anticipate then having to pay out the unemployment for that individual so which naturally we should I'm not here to say we shouldn't but it just that's a added cost. So I think for a program that we have no input with the federal government as far as what our budget is. And so, you know, I think we have been able to find a lot of, you know, talented individuals and individuals that you know we have been able to bring to the team over the past few months. The challenge in, in retaining the, you know, the breadth of staff that we need for a program is always going to be as the commissioner mentioned it's long term stable funding sources. I was just going to say I would add Cameron to that, you know that when you have programs where you don't know how long they're going to last, like Pua. You know so probably 4040 to 45% of our operations right now or Pua specific. And, and honestly under the first relief package that was supposed to end at the end of last year, and then got renewed for 11 weeks. Right so and and it's possible, it will get renewed again. So my guess is we won't know that till the eve, or after the expiration of the program like last time that that makes challenging. And so states I would just, I would just finish on this for me, you know states I think across the country are really frustrated with this frustrated with the funding model. And I think that's what COO uses to provide us our admin dollars. And, you know, I know one of our national association it's called NASWA. They are, you know, really understanding this and keen on this and trying to advocate for us at the federal level changes that we did. And, and I would just add that I think we're trying to have that conversation internally as well, which is you know how can we, you know, how can we better utilize what we have and kind of try to stabilize our funding sources moving forward in the future, because you know it is extremely challenging to to manage and budget to cycles that sometimes are one month at a time with the federal funds that we have. Representative Kitzmiller. I think my questions are much shorter. I'm really interested in the health of our trust fund at the moment, where do we stand do we still have some money of our own in there are we borrowing heavily from the feds if so has there been any forgiveness of that borrowing and what column are we collecting under as I recall we used to have about five different columns of percentage that we collected what what are the what are the numbers there I'll take an answer from anybody who has Go ahead camera. Yeah, yes, sir. So, I'll try to be very quick. We do have a trust fund report that is due January 31. And so, you know, representative Kitzmiller your committee House Commerce Committee will be one of the recipients of that report and also just mentioning it for the gov ops committee if they're interested. Our trust fund is a little under half of where we were at the beginning of the pandemic we had a little over $500 million in our trust fund now we're down to around 200 220 to 30 million. We have not borrowed. We are very fortunate in having the fund that we had prior to the pandemic. We were one of the most adequately funded trust funds in the country USD well actually had us ranked as number one, as far as having the necessary funds in our in our UI trust fund across the country. We are in a stable position, and we have not had to borrow one of the few states that have not I think Commissioner I think it's around 40% of the states maybe have had to borrow or in a pre authorization of borrowing status so And to your second question representative Miller it we are in the lowest tax schedule right now. You are correct there are five different tax schedules. Schedule five being the highest schedule one being the lowest, and we did go down to schedule one in July of 2020. We sent to a very complex formula and conversation as to how tax rates are scheduled or set and if if either of the chairs want us to go down that road or if there are any specific questions we can go down that road. We're currently in the lowest tax schedule, and we hit that this past July that's the first time we've hit tax schedule one since the last recession. So there was a lot of work that was done over the past 10 plus years by employers to help build the fund back up. We're finally able to hit tax schedule one. You know, I think people could argue. There isn't a more appropriate time getting everything going on, but we are the lowest tax schedule currently. I remember those days that's back when I was on Congress before and represented my card and I spent a lot of time working on how we would dig ourselves out of this hole. It leads me to a follow up question. I don't know there are a handful of states that are. I will call them bad actors in the whole UI trust front in California, Illinois, come come to mind that just start so far underwater they will likely never dig their way out of that. In the middle of all of this. Are there any thoughts of forgiving any that's I would be kind of ticked off if if these terrible states that have just used it the wrong way. They're up at schedule five and they know they're never going to catch up. Do you see tax cut dollars go to bailing out these people who did absolutely the wrong thing over decades. Right. Yes, sir. So there are states, you know that that, you know, traditionally do not build up a UI trust fund. You know, I think they would argue that their goal is to try to keep employer taxes low that would be their argument. But in these situations they have to borrow, you know, California situation you know billions of dollars from the US government in order to to pay their UI obligations. The federal government has extended. I'm not sure if they extended it through 2021 but I know through calendar year 2020, they did wave interest payments on any borrowing. Again, I don't know if that has been extended we could find out what I can tell you is there has been some conversation at the federal level. I don't want to say it like the Congress the congressional level. There's been conversations among our state partners about just relieving the funds all to relieving the loans all together and making them grants, instead of the loans. And I can tell you that in the conversations I've had I've been one of the first and and other states in our situation have raised our hand to say that would not be equitable to the states like Vermont, who have put in the hard work to get a trust fund that has been adequate to serve us in times like this and states that have been the good actors the states that have put in the hard work to build up our trust funds and did not need to borrow any penalized or should be given some sort of recognition in that moment so I will recognize representative kids Miller that that is. That's a conversation that happens and it's a conversation that as it goes forward, we do raise our hand to say, you know, we put in the hard work and, you know, if you're going to, you know, bail out states in that type of way. And states like Vermont should be given something to recognize what we've been able to do over the past 10 years to build up our fund and not have to be in a situation where we needed to borrow so we are aware of that. Maybe they could forgive us for half an amount that they're forgiving California. Right. That was probably the next 75 years. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you representative kids Miller and you're correct. There's been. It was difficult on businesses and difficult on employees as well. In order for us to get that that trust fund built up the way we did, but we all persevered. We stuck to the plan, and thank God we did. And even when we did did come up with the plan. We never anticipated anything like this. It's true, but everybody did the right thing. That was a wonderful agreement. But real quick, Mr. Chair, I was just, I was able to pull the numbers up very quickly as of January 4th. California has borrowed nearly $18 billion. Illinois has had to borrow over $3 billion. So there are, you know, it looks like New York has had to borrow over $9 billion. So, how about New Hampshire. Let's see. I don't think New Hampshire has had to. They have not as far as I can see, but yeah. Good. Thanks. Representative Nigro. Thank you. The earlier comments about the different perspectives involved with every claim that certainly makes sense to me and and presumably when a constituent approaches us saying they haven't received payment from unemployment presumably some of those folks. At the end of the day, simply aren't eligible and and either don't understand that or, or disagree with it. But I'm curious of the adjudicated claims, if you could give some sense of how many of those are being found in favor of the claimant. And if that's whatever your answer to that is how that compares to prior to the pandemic. So, I'm thinking in terms of so before the pandemic I remember asking this question to are one of our adjudication staff, and they had said roughly 50% of all claims that whether their initial or continued weekly claims, about 50% roughly go into adjudications. So you can imagine given the volume that came through having 50% of those go into adjudications. There was a lot of work done on the front end to keep claims out of adjudication so I think it was probably much less than that, given some of the workarounds that took place. I don't know of those, especially during the pandemic of those that went into adjudications, how many are determined to be eligible in the end. The problem is, you, you don't know the determination without the additional fact finding that occurs. And I will say, you know, well, if we just made this adjustment in the initial steps of the of the eligibility eligibility process, could we just keep them out of adjudications altogether. But sometimes you don't know that it's going to result the way it does until, for instance, when someone receives severance pay or they see receive vacation pay. They have to attest to what they earned for that pay. We, regardless of whether what they provided is true and accurate that case will go to adjudications because under the law, we have to validate what they report against what the employer reports. So, in those cases, there's nothing wrong with the claim in and of itself, but we have to validate, because we have to say okay, this is what the claim and claims they receive in severance pay. Does that match what the employer says they provided. And then we have to equate that to some, some term period. So does it equal a week's worth of pay does it equal to six or 10 weeks worth of pay, because that is what we consider offsetting remuneration so in those senses we would have to then determine for how many weeks are we offsetting someone's benefits because they got paid severance when they left their employment so that's an example of. There's not always something wrong with the claim. I want to say that that more often than not, at least, you know, in the majority, we end up determining a an adjudicated claim to be an eligible claim, which I think it's good news that there's more people out there being afforded benefits during this, this time, but some, but they go to adjudications, because that's how the system was designed. And it really is either based on the way they answered a question, because we have to validate the answer they gave, or because we received maybe different information from the employer so if we asked them both for information. The claimant says this and the employer says that and if they don't match up, then we have to adjudicate the claim. So there's a, there's a whole series of reasons why claims end up in adjudications and go through additional fact finding Cameron anything you wanted to add. No, sir, you know, I, I don't know how challenging it would be to try to get that answer but I think the commissioners identified it can be really nuanced. A lot of times it could be, you're denied for just this week, or you're denied for this amount of money but then you're eligible after that. So it. So it's always a straight denial or a straight eligible answer. Right. So, and maybe part of my question also is then the further you talked about the layers of appeal process and maybe, you know, how that relates to folks that appeal but presumably some of those appeals are probably continuing to ongoing because you said that to continue up the ladder of appeals can take six months to a year. Again, it takes about, you know, 60 to 90 days again, we receive this seasonal flood every year in the winter. So we're seeing the appeal time lapse increase because of that seasonal push. You know it could take anywhere from 60 to 90 days before you have your hearing in the level one of the appeal process right and part of that is because there are appeal rights given to both to any party with an interest in the claim. And, and in many cases it's the claimant who's appealing but there are times when it's the employer that's contesting the reason someone was made eligible. So we may deem it a claimant to be eligible because they say they were laid off and the claim and the employer then contests the claim because they say no this person quit. I'll be honest when I was the deputy of the department I sat as the chair of the Employment Security Board and which is fascinating by the way, you know, seeing the claims and the details with the claims but usually the answer or the truth is somewhere in the middle. And it's not very black and white. So, you know, it's the claimant saying well I never got a call back so I figured I was fired, and the employer saying well the person, you know, I didn't fire them but they never showed back up to work. And so then there's this question this gray area of where they did they quit or were they fired. And that's usually the part that ends up being worked out in the appeal process. So, you know, then it goes to the Employment Security Board which is the level to process. Again, those are, those are actually other than the one DOL representative. They're two members of the public, and these individuals give up their two to three hours every Tuesday morning to hear claims from either employers or claimants. And there really isn't a way to expedite that that is the legal process for hearing the step to appeals and then if they choose either party can can go before the Vermont Supreme Court for the third level of appeal. I think probably the last question we're, we're getting close to three o'clock. So representative Anthony. Thank you both. Thank you very much Mr Chairman, and thank you both commissioner and director might my, how shall I say, first inclination when I see a set of facts or a scenario or a story is to try to bring some logical limits to bear. And so, when I hear what's been described today as the challenges. I say to myself well. What we see in the last eight months, isn't an accident. That is to say, it was, it was almost preordained and I think both of you in different ways have almost conceded that. And so I say to myself so so who wanted this. And you also have used the analogy of essentially a tripartite set of stakeholders, and you've identified them I think, just late as the the executive and legislative branches of Vermont that's I consider those to be one contributor. If you've identified in some sense, then there's the employer community then there's obviously the employee. So if you ask yourself so who amongst those three participants wanted this disaster or benefited. Certainly, I think, sensibly you could discuss the employees I can't imagine any employee who finds themselves in a situation that you've described would have thought that that was a good outcome. So, really, the default settings, the level of complexity, the state overlay over the federal requirements are all human constructs. And so I guess I going forward, I want to say so what is it that we should do since only two stakeholders, arguably could have possibly benefited from, from what we're seeing around us and it's not employees. So what is it, what's our responsibility where do we go from here. I don't think it's as simple as plugging in a new mainframe. And by the way, I think there are some states that have used as you described ancillary activities, which have much more expensive flexibility, not using the mainframes that is to say clouds. So, well, mainframes may be part of the discussion because we have an old piece of junk. That's not going forward, where the only discussion should lie. So I guess I'm going in two ways. The human element is we constructed the complexity. We created the defaults. We decided the checks don't go. That's the default. Okay, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Economic Development and Community Affairs. The Department of almost you name it in the state of Vermont couldn't operate with the level of complexity and the defaults as you've described them. So it's something very unusual. And I think, it couldn't, we couldn't do business with this level of complexity or defaults in any other branch of government. So I think really this is an outlier, and we really should pay attention to why we created this complexity and the default settings as we have. Thank you. If I could, Mr. Chair, I absolutely agree with a representative. From that perspective, if you were to ask me whether my position on modernization has changed from February to now I would say yes. And in some ways I think, you know, if I try to find the silver lining and everything. The pandemic has opened our eyes to what our true needs are going to be going forward, because I think if we had built a modernized system in 2019. I'm not sure we would have been much better off based on the direction we were heading. The system may have been more secure, and it may have been more stable, but it was still built around administering one program, the unemployment insurance program. And really, now what we're talking about is how do we build a system that can meet the flexibilities of what has come out of this pandemic, which is how do you create a modular system that can be that can stand up multiple programs in a very short time, but can all work hand in hand, can all meet the federal requirements can all meet the federal reporting requirements, and, and still function so flexibility is going to be the name of the game in terms of modernization going forward. I think the other piece I would add to that is, there are components that have really prevented us modernization is one. I think we're going to have to find a solution to the funding issue. And I don't know long term, whether we can reside reside solely on or operate solely on federal funding. We may have to find another mechanism for supporting administrative functions within the UI program we were already having this conversation before the pandemic the pandemic just highlighted it fast tracked it. But we knew that we couldn't continue to operate on the budget that was being provided to us by the feds, you know, going forward in the long term. And then the other component to, to representative Anthony's point, and I don't know. I don't know the answer to this, but one of the, one of the issues that has made this UI so much different than all of those other areas and our ability to respond more quickly to the needs of our constituents. One thing that has held us back is a blatant unwillingness by the federal government and specifically the US Department of Labor to provide any flexibility in how eligibility criteria are defined and implemented and used, or the, the ability to stop non critical functions in UI to focus on claim processing, or the fact that, you know, in the end, you know, we are accountable to the Office of Inspector General. And they were also provided an additional $30 million, I think it was like 26 point something million dollars just to conduct oversight and enforcement. And so, you know, part of our problem in responding was was not was not solely on us. You know, part of that was our inability to be innovative and creative and still meet the criteria set forth by the federal government in order to continue to receive administrative funding and benefit so you know when people talk about, you know, essentially just tossing the federal requirements aside. There are, there are severe implications that come with that in up to an including a loss of the federal eligibility for benefits so we could have lost PUA funding we could have lost FPUC funding we could have lost PUC funding. We could have been forced as a state to repay any of those funds that were dished out for administrative or benefit dollars. And at times you could even say, you know, blatant disregard could result in a loss of the state to even operate a UI program. Obviously, I think many states found themselves and we took necessary risks to make sure we, we didn't get caught up in too much of a quandary but that is one of the biggest challenges we have faced and we have voiced that frustration to the US Department of Labor on multiple occasions. Thank you very much. Thank you sir. Well, thank you very much. Madam Chair, anything that you would like to ask her way in on before we say goodbye. Well, I just want to say I appreciate very much having a good two hour block of time. I know how precious your hours are and and how hard you folks are working. And so I appreciate you giving us this opportunity and look forward to continuing the dialogue on how to support your department in delivering the services that Vermonters are really relying on. I will. And I just want to extend my thanks to both committees. You know, I will echo what Representative Mulvaney Stanek mentioned which is, you know, the, the constituent or the claimant is really the focal point of all of this and, you know, it is our charge to make sure that those individuals that are eligible for benefits get their benefits in a timely manner and we continue to strive to do that. It's not always easy. I think it also creates a challenging position for folks in our UI area and myself included because everybody is likely deserving of some type of support. And, and they are all coming to us with incredible needs and and disparaging situations and unfortunately we don't always have the ability to take all those factors into consideration when determining eligibility. This is something I think that weighs heavy on our staff. Every time we do have to deny somebody and, and luckily we've been able to broaden our eligibility to make more people eligible for benefits. But, but to what Representative Mulvaney Stanek said, you know, we continually look at this with an eye on the claimant and serving the claimant and constituent so thank you very much. Okay, thank you Commissioner Director Wood. We appreciate your time. We know how valuable it is. I think this was a good discussion, especially for new members of both committees. And I hope the, the older members of GOV ops were interested in the wonderful world of unemployment insurance. And I think that we've, that we've been going through for many, many years and I think is representative Kits Miller was talking about the last time that we were in the problems with the system and, and the plans that we put into place, where both employers and employees were, were harmed. But we also recognize at that point that it's, it was the employers who took on the bulk of the problem. It should be it's an insurance program for employers. And so, I think we continue to focus in that direction that this is something that that we watch out, make sure that our employees are taking care of when they lose their jobs to no fault of their own. And it's a system that set up for us to make sure that people that do lose their jobs have some income to survive on. And we also continue to work and I know the department works hard to make sure that those people get back on the job as soon as they can, because I think we all know the longer that people stay unemployed and stay disconnected from the workforce. The more app they are to not re enter the workforce. So, again, thank you for all your work and thank you, Madam chair and members of gov ops for joining us this afternoon and I hope we can do it again. And everyone have a good weekend.